Volunteering at Manav Sadhna
August 2017. While in Rajasthan, I had thought I would go to Ahmedabad, Gujurat, and volunteer at Manav Sadhna. However, monsoon rains led to flooding and a dengue outbreak, so it seemed best to postpone. My six months in India were coming to an end; I decided I would return in December to see India in high season when the weather is most inviting, having suffered through the heat and rains of the low season.
What is Manav Sadhna? Manav Sadhna is an NGO based in Ahmedabad, Gujurat. They work on improving the lives of people living in the slums, mostly through educating children and helping women.
What inspired me to want to volunteer at Manav Sadhna? Because of my close friends: Rish, Sima, and Dev have volunteered here. Dev went in December 2016, and he came back with so much positive energy and love, I was inspired to visit. They have a simple but powerful slogan: “Love all, Serve all.”
December 2017. This part of my trip finally manifested. I landed at the airport, and I called Bharat bhai (“bhai” means brother, which is how you address men in Gujurat; women are “ben”, which means sister). Bharat bhai drove me straight to Manav Sadhna’s center in the afternoon, which is located on the grounds of the Gandhi ashram. I met Shirish bhai and Ajay bhai, who help to coordinate the volunteers.
Shirish bhai took me to my accommodation, across the street from the Gandhi ashram. I would live here for five weeks.
Orientation
The first few days, Ajay bhai showed me along with other volunteers around the community centers of Manav Sadhna. Over a few days, I visited three of them, in different communities around Ahmedabad.
The first one I visited is MSCC — Manav Sadhna Community Center. This is the first community center Manav Sadhna built. After a 20-minute walk through the slum with Ajay bhai, we first walked into a recycling center. Ajay bhai explained how women, who are conventionally called “rag-pickers”, go out on the streets at 2 a.m., and pick about 20kg of recyclable trash everyday. In the morning they sort it, and sell it to a recycler for Rs. 100 ($1.56). This money is then all used to feed their family that day. Since the women are illiterate, the middlemen sometimes cheat the women and pay them less than what they deserve. So Manav Sadhna provides this recycling center where the women get a fair rate, and a place to sort trash outside their homes (so this improves sanitations of homes as well). These women now make twice as much — Rs. 200 ($3.12)!
The recycling center is attached to the school. We walked up the stairs into a large circular courtyard. There were about 120 children, grades 6–9, in various classrooms.
The children welcomed me and other guests by clapping their hands and saying “Wel-come!” in unison, three times. It felt very inviting and made me smile.
We toured the other parts at MSCC — a computer room and a dental office. One dentist volunteers here, and offers low cost dental services for members of the community.
Kirin Center is the second center I visited. I arrived here one morning with Amy ben and Ajay bhai. This is a newer center with young children. They greeted another volunteer and I with the endearing “Wel-come!” clap, followed by a red tikka on the forehead. The lecture of the day was hand sanitation. I watched Ajay bhai demonstrate how to wash their hands — which he taught through a cheerful song. The entire school then washed their hands. The next morning, a dentist came and showed the children how to properly brush their teeth, followed by examining all the children to see if they had cavities. Very practical education.
Manav Gulzaar is the third center I visited. Walking into this community center, the first interesting thing I noticed is that there is a Hindu temple next to a Muslim temple. It was nice to see the two co-existing, but it also reflected the community that center is located in. Again, we toured one of the classes, where the children greeted us with the best “Wel-come!” yet! I then talked with head of the community center head, who explained various programs. One of the programs encourages women to have a savings account. The women would deposit Rs. 20/day into their savings, and withdraw it whenever it was needed urgently. The women would do this without their husbands knowing, who usually spend the money on tobacco/liquor. To encourage women to deposit money, gifts are given at the end of the year to the women who save the most money.
After three days of viewing the various centers, Ajay bhai asked me what I wanted to do. I wasn’t quite sure, but I chose to focus on working at MSCC, where I could teach the children about technology.
Teaching
In the mornings, I would leave my apartment at 8:40am, and walk 20 minutes through the slum to get to MSCC. Some parts were smelly, some with a lot of trash everywhere. Having travelled India quite a bit, I overall felt de-sensitized to the pollution, but I’m briefly mentioning it here since you may be wondering what a slum is like.
When I arrived at 8am, the children would be doing pratna (the Manav Sadhna prayer). The beauty of this prayer is that it covers all the major religions in the area — Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Christianity. I enjoyed sitting in the back of the class room and listening to the children sing.
You can hear the 7-minute pratna track that the children sing along to below. You can read the lyrics or download here.
Since I arrived to MSCC mid-week, I spent the first two days just hanging out, observing. I asked the head teacher, Malti ben, when I would get a schedule to teach. She told me on Friday we would draw up my schedule for the next week. Until then, I could just observe classes and acclimate.
On Friday I was given my schedule. I would teach 6th and 8th graders on Mondays, and 7th graders on Wednesdays. In between I would do library hours, or research short videos that teach values.
I spent Saturday and Sunday creating my first Keynote presentation for Monday’s classes. Along with an introduction, I thought I would give them a lesson on the history of computing. For the introduction I used Google Earth to show where I was born, where I grew up, where I went to university, etc. I added some photos of my family and friends. After that, I began the lecture, showing them computers from the 1940s, to modern day smartphones. I would teach them words like CLI (command line interface), GUI (graphical user interface), and NUI (can you guess it?).
Oh, and another thing I had to take into consideration is that the children all speak Gujurati, some Hindi, and not much English. So I would have to give my lecture using my basic Hindi/Punjabi skills.
On Monday I gave my first lecture to the 7th grade class. They were mesmerized by the introduction. As for the lecture part, Anjali ben (the class teacher) would help me by quizzing the students along the way about terms (“What was the first computer?” “What does CLI mean?”). After the lecture the children all crowded around my Macbook, staring at it, asking how much it cost. I was reluctant to tell them how much it was, but I said “2 lakh” (Rs. 200,000, or $3,000 USD). I also mentioned my last employer had bought my Mac, which somehow made me feel less guilty for owning such an expensive object. I didn’t want the children to feel a huge gap between me and them, although there is.
Later I also started teaching English in the mornings. It was never planned — I only knew what I would be teaching right before class started. It was assumed that since I knew English, I would know how to teach it as well. But I’ve had no experience teaching children. The first few mornings I would feel nervous when walking to school. Eventually I became comfortable with knowing that since it was basic knowledge, I could do it on-the-fly. I could expect the teachers to give me an advance schedule so I could prepare, but I had sympathy for them, knowing they are handling their own classes, as well as trying to manage me, a short-term volunteer.
Over the course of 4 weeks, I ended up only giving another lecture to the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade classes, because of a big show the children were preparing for (Jai Jagat), as well as holiday festivities (Christmas and New Year’s). My second lecture was about how basic HTML code works. I observed that the children like to learn collaboratively, so I would write some basic HTML, and have one student come to my computer and modify something (like changing the text color, creating a bulleted list, etc.). In this way the students could take turns and learn with each other.
The Other Volunteers
I spent time with volunteers during lunches and after school. Such beautiful souls from all walks of life.
There were optional weekly activities that the volunteers could go to. On Mondays, we could go to bhajans (devotional singing) at Viren bhai’s home. On Wednesdays there would be an Awakin Circle, where we would spend time together meditating, sharing reflections on an article, and then having dinner in silence.
On Christmas Eve, there was a special function at Viren bhai’s home. We all got small gifts, and had tacos for dinner, which was a treat! Later we sat in a circle, and sang some Christmas songs, or shared stories. It was an intimate evening, especially with a beautiful performance from one of the volunteers, Shirish.
One of the volunteers, Rishio, made this beautiful one-minute film about David. David is working on his own farm project in one of the blind schools. He spends a lot of time in the dirt, cultivating it, and does most of it alone. Many find David to be inspiring — to be laboring in the Indian heat, living simply, and ultimately giving love to all the children at the blind school.
There’s many other beautiful souls I met here and resonated with. I had found members of my tribe abroad.
Jai Jagat
When I first arrived to Manav Sadhna on December 1st, the children were preparing for a big show called “Jai Jagat” on December 26th. I would watch the children practice over the weeks.
On December 26th, it all came together. I felt joy watching the children perform; the show had a simple message of non-violence, love, and equality for girls, and that everyone can be a hero!
I couldn’t stop smiling during the whole show, my heart softened by the experience. I had gotten close to the children.
Below is a one-minute highlight one of the volunteers made.
Farewell
My volunteering ended on the first week of January. During my farewell speech, I spoke about what I had done, teaching English and technology, and I felt how I would miss the children saying, “hello Ankur sir!”, and in that exact moment all the faces of the children flashed through my head, which caused me to break and down and start crying. Wow. I didn’t expect that!
During my time volunteering, I thought a lot about how my time could be used more efficiently. Towards the end, I realized that one month is not much time to make a difference. Manav Sadhna was allowing me to come in to get a glimpse of the lives of people living in the slum communities. I came in with my intellectual mind, but I left with a bigger heart, inflated with smiles from the children.
I must say, while I was teaching, I forgot that I was teaching children in a slum community. The children are like any other children in the world in my eyes. One side effect of being around so many children is that I awakened my own inner child. I myself became more playful, loud, energetic; and perhaps more in the present, but less mindful than usual. What a contrast from my prior month at Agama yoga, where I was focused on the inner self, energizing myself through meditation and yoga; here the children easily infused me with their energy.
There were also moments when I felt cute overload everyday. A part of me was like, “oh how cute it would be to have a daughter”, and then I would feel surprised about having such fatherly thoughts. lol
Volunteering at Manav Sadhna was the last of my goals that I had set before leaving for this backpacking trip to India. I left with some experience of how to teach children, and what slums in India were like. More importanrly, I left with a bigger heart, and an idea of what it means to Love All, Serve All.
